The InnovatED Blog

Sara Vanderbilt

Sara joined MAPSA at the beginning of 2016 and is responsible for keeping the rest of the team on task. She believes it is her role to do everything in her power to set her colleagues and MAPSA up for success. Prior to joining MAPSA, she worked as Executive Director of a membership organization for senior-level meeting and event planners. She values all of MAPSA’s members and works to ensure they are well cared for.

Recent Posts

What are the benefits of a portable 401k, you ask? First, it’s portable. In today’s workplace, the median U.S. worker has less than 5 years at their current job. Teachers are no exception to this. With so much mobility in our careers, having a retirement system that you can transfer from one job to another is very beneficial. Most portable 401K programs will even suspend your investments if the time between positions is longer than normal.

Can you sense it? It’s right around the corner and almost everyone is looking forward to it. It’s SUMMER BREAK! About this time in the school year, everyone from kids to parents to teachers, start daydreaming about what their summer breaks will look like. There might be trips to take, swimming to be done, and house/yard work to catch-up on. This list of activities might seem manageable until you realize just how fast the summer flies by.

Her name was Bev and she was wonderful. She had smiles and kind words for me and any other student that came to the office. She wiped our tears when we didn’t feel good and gave us hugs on our birthdays. Bev was the school secretary at the middle school I attended.

Over the last week, nominees for the have been submitting their applications for the Michigan Charter School Teacher of the Year award . I have had the opportunity to read through many of them and I have seen a common theme running through the applications – empowered teachers.

In 1970, Robert K. Greenleaf, an AT&T executive, coined the phrase servant leadership. Since that time, many people have tried to define servant leadership. But what does it mean to be a servant leader and how can servant leadership impact a classroom and school?

A simple definition of servant leadership involves leading others from a mindset of placing the needs of the organization and the needs of people over the needs and desire of the leader. This is not easy. Many times ego gets in the way of true servant leadership. However, an organization that has a servant as a leader can have wide-reaching impact on the effectiveness of its employees.

I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as work/life balance. There used to be, but not anymore. Just a few years ago, most of us could escape and remain disconnected from the office for hours at a time. But that’s not the case in today’s hectic, technology filled life.

Today, our personal and work lives are so intertwined you can’t separate the two. Smartphones, tablets, cloud access to data and social media have tied us to school when we are at the grocery store, in waiting rooms, and at the kitchen table. We are connected 24 hours a day! Managing life and work it is not a matter of balance; it’s a matter of efficiency of time.